Stand and Wait (standard:drama, 2559 words)
Author: Otzchiim	Added: Oct 09 2000	Views/Reads: 4437/2436	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
She couldn't have anything up her sleeve -- she had been stripped naked. But she had a brain, a friend in an unexpected place, and a couple of strong motives.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

That was just before Lisa graduated, and it made her a lot meaner. 
There was no way she was going to college now, with no money, and 
losing her brother was almost too much for her. 

Lisa's uncle Luigi (who Lou had been named after) got her a job in the
tool factory where he worked.  Office job, but it was a small and loose 
enough place that they had her doing line jobs sometimes when it was 
needed. 

The cops didn't work very hard on finding out who killed Lou, from what
we saw, but Lisa didn't forget it. 

And Joey wasn't going to forget what Lisa had done to him.  Joey partly
had me as his lieutenant because I was good at planning and at noticing 
things, but this time he had everything worked out and just wanted to 
talk about it, so I just listened.  That was Tuesday. 

The neighborhood around the projects had been a lot better before they
went up, and for a while after.  A lot of the houses were boarded up 
and abandoned now, but they had some of them been good houses once.  
Joey and I had found one where the man who lived there had been a home 
workshop type.  He had put up a shed inside his big basement, wood 
walls and door but with steel piles sunk in the cement to hold it.  And 
at the top of the stairs there was a big steel door, that kept the 
sound in so the wife (and maybe kids) wouldn't be disturbed by the 
noise when he worked. 

The man took the power tools with him when he left but we found a couple
screwdrivers and a hammer when we went through the place.  (A sharpened 
screwdriver's nearly good as a knife, and they can't say it's a 
concealed weapon, so we look for them.)  But Joey almost shit when he 
bumped the light switch on the wood wall and the light in the shed went 
on. 

The man who lived here must have not felt like paying all the electric
bill for his power tools, cause he had rigged up a connection that went 
around the meter, and when the house current had been shut off, that 
stayed on. 

Joey and I and a couple of others had taken over that house, and fixed
up the basement some.  The free power was only from the outlets in the 
shed, but we ran extension cords.  We had a place where nobody was ever 
going to look for us, and nobody could tell we were there.  At least 
after we painted the windows to the outside black. 

Joey took over the shed for a place to sit and talk.  And he moved in a
twin bed that he could use for private sessions. 

That'll tell you what he had in mind for Lisa.  One change he made for
that was to put a lock on that shed door, with a key. 

What he had planned out was to have I and three other guys grab Lisa
when she was coming home from work one day.  I took her from behind and 
put a hand over her mouth.  She tried biting, but with a thick glove 
nothing much happened.  Randy tried to take one arm and also watch to 
see she didn't do to him what she did to Joey.  She didn't try; she 
kicked him in the stomach instead.  That put her off balance so Dan 
could get the other arm.  She went with it and put her fist in his 
crotch. 

I tried leaning on her to bend her down, but she twisted and got back to
her feet, and almost got one of my feet with a hard kick back.  The 
four of us were enough to put her in a car, though, and we drove her 
for several miles until we got back to only a few blocks from where we 
got her. 

We had blindfolded her in the car, and when we got her in the basement
we took it off.  Also everything else she had on.  One thing and 
another, that was maybe harder than putting her in the car was.  She 
never did give up.  When she was naked she slumped and then got away 
for a second and raked Nick across the face with her fingernails. 

We threw her in the shed naked.  There was no switch on the inside, and
nothing in there she could use to get out.  Nothing there but the bed 
and a bedpan, if fact; we moved everything else out. 

The shed was built too solidly for her to break out with main force,
though a big man might.  We just left her there. 

That was Friday night.  It was sundown on Saturday when Joey and I came
back to the house.  Joey switched on the light in the shed and unlocked 
the door.  She tried to break past, but it didn't work.  Joey held her 
while I got the bedpan and dropped a sandwich, then he held the door 
until I came back. 

He went in the shed and I locked it after him.  He told her that she
wasn't going to get out of that house until he had had her.  That could 
be easy or hard, depending on her, but either was all right with him.  
With the big door upstairs and nobody in the house on either side, 
nobody was going to hear her scream.  And afterward, she would be given 
her clothes and let go. 

That's what he told her.  What Joey had told me a couple of days before
was something else.  He wanted her not to cooperate.  He hoped the word 
was right, that she was a virgin, because he wanted to bust her up 
inside and make her scream.  Then after he was finished he was going to 
get three or four other guys to work on her.  (Dan and Nick and Randy 
wanted to now, and they would be waiting upstairs soon.) 

And he was going to let her go, but without her clothes and way off in
the worst neighborhood we could find. 

While Joey was in there talking to her, he had me wait outside the shed
to let him out when he wanted.  I spent my time thinking and planning. 

When I went down those steps in May a year ago, by the overpass, I
spotted something in the weeds before the cops walked up from their 
car, and I slid it in my pocket.  I didn't know then exactly what it 
meant, but I thought I recognized it. 

It was a leather punch, and one I thought I has deen Joey with.  Later I
saw that the tip was broken, and yes, the original owner's name was on 
it and it was the one Joey had.  While I wouldn't mind getting rid of 
Joey and taking over, going to the cops was sure not the way to do it.  
That's the wrong kind of reputation to get.  But there was someone else 
who was interested in this business. 

Joey was really scared for a while there, since he didn't know where the
punch went, but he gradually relaxed. 

A while after Lisa started working at the tool factory, I met her as she
came out.  I didn't want to be seen with her around the neighborhood.  
She didn't want to talk to me either, but I gradually brought her 
around. 

I told her what I had found out and showed her the punch.  She wanted to
tell the police, but I explained to her that there was no convincing 
story that would allow her both to claim she found the punch and to 
link it to Joey. 

The cops couldn't do anything, she couldn't bring herself to kill Joey
outright, and I didn't want to have it traced to me. There was no way 
to avenge her brother Lou other than hire somebody to off Joey, and 
that was what she was working toward for most of a year. 

When Joey attacked her in the street, everything changed as far as she
was concerned.  Things were coming to a head.  When Joey told me what 
he wanted to do to her, I told it to her.  Especially the last part. 

She knew then what she wanted to do, and I agreed.  That was Wednesday. 

On Thursday she handed the punch back to me.  Either she or her uncle
had worked on it -- probably her.  One side had been worked on a 
machine lathe until it had an edge like a straight razor.  The other 
side, where the chip had come out, had more taken out until it had a 
hook that came back with a barb.  Thursday night I took the punch into 
the old house and stuck it beside the mattress to the bed down in the 
basement where it wouldn't be seen. 

So there I was standing in the dark. Joey had stopped talking to her by
now.  Lisa had started to cooperate, and I heard the bedsprings creak 
as she sat down, then more as Joey did.  Joey liked to flaunt what he 
had, even if he was the only one it mattered to, and he picked a bed 
with really noisy springs to advertise that he was having fun. 

There were more creaks, and I heard him say something to her about how
she was going to really like this, and then came the first scream.  I 
unlocked the door after the screams stopped, and went in.  Lisa had 
blood on her mouth, and on most of the rest of her. 

The first sound from Joey had come when she bit down on his tongue,
before she sliced his back up and then ripped it straight up with the 
hook. 

Word I gave out was that Joey had been stupid and careless and carried
the punch in there and she got hold of it.  Other people had seen it 
before, and changing it that way was the kind of thing Joey would do. 

Like I said, Joey trusted me.  I was set up to take over the gang now,
but there wasn't anybody I would trust that much.  I wanted to get out 
of this while I could, and when Lisa got me a job in the tool factory, 
I took the chance. 

If you want to know whether Lisa really was a virgin -- well, I tried to
find out, but she didn't trust me that far either.  Can't hav 
everything, I guess. Getting Lisa the information I had about her 
brother made her friendly to me, but not that much. ?? 


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